April 7, 2015

Finest Hour 123, Summer 2004

Page 07

QUOTATION OF THE SEASON

“The difficulty is not winning the war; it is in persuading people to let you win it—persuading fools”
—WSC TO HIS SECRETARY, MARIAN HOLMES, 7 OCTOBER 1943

The Very Place

OTTAWA, JANUARY 1ST— Longtime Churchillian Rafal Heydel-Mankoo, on the Committee of ICS, UK (right), joined the Hon. Peter Milliken MP, Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons, in the very spot Churchill occupied when Yousuf Karsh snapped his famous series of photos (the most famous is shown) following Churchill’s “Some Chicken, Some Neck!” speech to Canada’s Parliament in December 1941.

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Livadia Palace Churchill Room

YALTA, APRIL 15TH— Roxanne Hale of Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania, is the latest donor of books by Churchill to the Churchill Room at Livadia Palace (right) which is dwarfed by the Roosevelt Room but has a better library—thanks to members of The Churchill Centre. Other donors of books were Laurence Geller, Richard Langworth, Bill Ives, Craig Horn, Lady Soames, Winston Churchill the Countess of Avon and Churchillbooks.com.

Roxanne, determined to furnish the Livadia with a copy of the scarce postwar speech book Stemming the Tide, dug all over England and America for a first edition, finally tracking down a copy in London. We are most grateful for her contribution.

YALTA, FEBRUARY 13TH— The Churchill Room opened today in the Ukraine’s magnificent Livadia Palace, setting for the 1945 Yalta conference which led to the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan—and certain other Soviet undertakings which were never undertaken. It was the 59th anniversary of the conference between Churchill, President Franklin Roosevelt and Josef Stalin.

UK Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell said: “The creation of a room within the Palace in honour of Sir Winston Churchill is a fitting tribute to the significant role he played at the Yalta conference. It will complement the Palace’s existing room dedicated to President Roosevelt. It is thanks to Lady Soames, whose vision this first was, and to the Ukrainian authorities, that this important monument to wartime cooperation will be more widely understood.”

Lady Soames said: “I am delighted to hear that the Churchill Room will be opened. I am extremely pleased that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the British Embassy in Kiev have been able to realise this project together with the Livadia Palace.”